We gave each hotel a numerical rating based on how many lists it appeared on and how high it appeared on the lists that were ranked. Hotels that appeared on all five lists ranked higher on our list, while hotels that ranked on only one of these lists ended up closer to the bottom.

For Travel + Leisure's and Condé Nast Traveler's lists, which were both ranked one to 100, we gave a half point to any hotel appearing on the list, and then a bonus between 0 and 1 point based on where they appeared on the list, giving a total score between 0 and 1.5. For example, The Langham hotel in Chicago was ranked 90th by Travel + Leisure, so it received 0.5 points for appearing on the list, and then 0.11 bonus points for its eleventh from the bottom position, for a total Travel + Leisure score of 0.61.

For TripAdvisor's list, which was ranked out of 25, we assigned a similar score, giving a half point for appearing on the list and then a bonus from 0 to 1 based on the hotel's ranking.

Since the Fodor's and Jetsetter's lists were unranked, we simply assigned a hotel a half point for any hotel that showed up on the list.